Glooscap - illustration for Whirlwind is a Ghost Dancing

Leo and Diane Dillon

A very rare, original illustration for Natalia Maree Belting's 1974 book, Whirlwind is a Ghost Dancing, a book of prose by the author written in relation to Indigenous North American mythology. The book was illustrated by the award-winning husband and wife artists Leo and Diane Dillon. This is an original pochoir illustration done for the book, executed on vellum using pastel and gouache, which was then cut out into two elements that were collaged one atop the other onto an illustration board. It is for the poem that tells an imagined Mi'kmaq (here spelled Micmac) origin myth. The Mi’kmaq are a tribe of Canada’s Atlantic Provinces and northern Maine. The image represents Glooscap, a mythological figure who brought knowledge of hunting, fishing, and of growing corn to the tribe. The accompanying text, on page 32, reads:

"Glooscap's wigwam/Once stood with the wigwams of men,/And men learned from him/how to raise corn, how to fish,/How to fashion bows and arrows/And to hunt with them./They learned the stars./Whatever they needed to know,/Glooscap taught men."

Leo and Diane Dillon were an award-winning, husband-and-wife team of illustrators, famous for their covers for science fiction and fantasy books in the 1970s and 1980s. They were also prolific children's book illustrators and authors. The artists broke barriers in the American illustration world, with Leo being the first Black man to win a Caldecott Medal and Diane the first woman – and the only until 2014 - to receive a Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist. They met at the Parsons School of Design in the mid 1950s, where they were rival illustrators for a year before falling in love and marrying in 1957. Their joint career spanned over 50 years before Leo’s death in 2012; Diane Dillon continues to work as an illustrator in New York.